This research aims to develop a simulation testbed to study performance issues of distributed algorithms in a comprehensive manner. A number of distributed algorithms have been designed to solve some of the central problems of distributed computing like exclusion, synchronization, and deadlock detection. However, little effort has been devoted to studies that attempt to predict the performance of these algorithms under different operating conditions. The research will identify a common set of performance metrics and the primary factors that affect performance of different algorithms. Based on the above metrics, the simulation testbed will be used to achieve two objectives: for given problem (example, synchronization) and operating conditions (example, fully connected network topology) identify "best" available algorithm; use the performance results to develop a hypothesis to express the complexity of distributed algorithms and to quantitatively compare different algorithms for a given problem. The study will focus on a set of problems, which have been solved by using different combinations and extensions of known algorithms. Performance models will be developed using a modular, "building block" approach to exploit the commonality in the solution of these problems.
